1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to digital and online advertising, and more particularly, to the selection and delivery of ads for delivery into interactive content presented to users of digital data processing devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
The field of advertising has changed drastically as a result of advancements in technology, such as the popularity of mobile devices, the decline of print media, and the widespread use of the worldwide web. Electronic advertisements (“ads”) now appear in web sites, video clips, emails, automated applications that gather information via the Internet, and many other locations, media, and formats.
One challenge is how to target ads to users. Vendors of products and services have an interest in delivering their ads to the users that are mostly likely to purchase their products and services. Advertisers, hired by such vendors, are similarly seeking the same users because vendors typically pay advertisers based on the response or level of interest generated by such ads.
One approach to targeting ads classifies web sites or web pages or mobile applications based on the content. In the case of a web page, a web crawler or indexer or other software program scans web page text and analyzes the text to determine the topic of the web page. In a specific example, the web crawler may find that a given web page is focused on selling and reviewing digital cameras, and therefore the web site is associated with a “digital camera” classification. These web site classifications are later used to target ads to web users that visit this site. For example, knowing that a given web site concerns digital cameras, when choosing ads to deliver into that web site, an advertiser may consider historical performance of ads on digital camera web sites in choosing an ad for the current web site.
Although this approach works well in some situations, there can be problems. For instance, it can be difficult to classify some web sites or web pages or mobile applications. One example is a political web site whose text does not include language clearly demonstrating any leanings toward one particular party or issue. Further, even if classification can be achieved based on the content, the classification may not be useful from an advertiser's perspective. For example, a content classification of “News Blog” may not be enough to easily determine which ad to play on such content.
Another difficulty is where a web page or web site or mobile application appeals to a niche audience. For instance, a web site may be highly focused on a specialty such as large format Southern hemisphere celestial photography. Even though the content of the web site fairly suggests the web site's topic, and is therefore discernable to web crawlers and the like, advertisers may lack sufficient historical performance data for ads at this web site or content category to make any meaningful choice of ad to deliver there.
Besides targeting ads based on content, another approach considers the users. Relatedly, users are commonly classified according to their topics of interest, demographics (such as age, gender, income range, education, geography, and the like), web browsing time, past purchases, web browsing behavior, the user's browser, operating system, and many more items. These user classifications are later used to target ads to the individual users. For example, knowing that a given user is interested in digital cameras, an advertiser may consider the historical performance of ads on digital camera fans when choosing an ad to deliver to that user. The additional issue of the content of the current web page or web site or mobile application may be another factor in the decision, or user classification may be sufficient by itself.
Although the audience classification approach works well in some situations, there can be problems. For instance, as to a particular user, the advertiser may lack any information or sufficient information about that user.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that the known ad targeting systems have certain benefits, and have proven useful in many circumstances. Nevertheless, there are other situations where these approaches are not completely adequate due to certain unsolved problems.